1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to work order management systems and, more particularly, to processes and to systems for tracking, logging, and managing changes in status to a work order.
2. Description of the Related Art
Most residential and business telephone customers are connected to telephone systems by copper cables and wires. These copper cables are the familiar one or more telephone lines running throughout nearly every home in the United States. Because copper cable and wire connects each home, and many businesses, to the telephone system, the Public Switched Telephone Network is composed of billions of copper cables and wires. Each of these copper cables must be maintained to provide superior telephone service to the customer.
Because hundreds of work orders are generated each day, managers and governmental regulators often monitor the status of these work orders. The status of a work order indicates how, and what point, the work order has progressed from initial creation to final closure. The status of a work order, for example, indicates whether the work order has been assigned to a manual screening process, or whether the work order is currently being worked by a field technician. Managers and governmental regulators then use these changes in status to monitor how quickly customer problems are resolved and, thus, how well customers are satisfied.
These changes in status, however, are often inaccurately and incompletely tracked. Status changes are often miscoded and inaccurately reported. Human operators, for example, may incorrectly assign a technician dispatch status code when, in fact, the technician has already closed the work order. Human operators, too, are prone to inadvertent data entry errors. These errors often cascade throughout the status tracking system, creating an incomplete and inaccurate tracking history of the work order. Managers and regulators, therefore, have an inaccurate view of maintenance activities, an inaccurate measurement of maintenance goals, and an inaccurate measurement of customer service and satisfaction.
There is, accordingly, a need in the art for work order management systems that acquire fresh, up-to-date information, that automatically and accurately track the status of maintenance work orders, that reduce human error by automatically assigning status codes, that accurately and quickly reflect true management and regulatory objectives and goals, and that reduce the costs of maintaining operations.